Okay. I can finally talk about it.
I finally feel like it is my time to talk about Jordan, Israel, and De-Nial.
Somehow, my brain took the Jordan River and Israel and turned them into the perfect description of this entire experience:
Jordan. Israel. And a whole damn river of denial.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, I was in a fraudulent friendship.
Fraudulent. Fraudulent. Friendship.
And before we get into it: names and identifying details have been changed because this is not an exposé. I’m not here to destroy anybody. I’m here to talk about what happened to me, what I learned from it, and why—strangely enough—I’m grateful it happened.
The full story could be a Netflix limited series, so this is the “brief” synopsis—which, if you know me, means buckle up.
I met Jordan at a meeting. I noticed him because he had great skin.
That’s it. That is how this saga begins.
Not with ominous music. Not with a mysterious stranger lurking in an alleyway.
Great skin.
He looked a little out of place, so after the meeting I walked up to him and said something along the lines of, “Hi. You have great skin.”
And we hit it off immediately.
He came to dinner with everyone after the meeting. We happened to sit together, and from there the friendship went from zero to approximately 700 miles per hour.
Within days, we were hanging out constantly. Then we decided we should start a podcast together.
And when I say we started a podcast, I don’t mean we sat around saying, Wouldn’t it be fun to have a podcast someday?
No. We were doing the thing.
We were going to the Apple Store. We were researching microphones on Amazon. We were recording on my computer. We were making calls. We were figuring out logistics and schedules. He was bringing me coffee in the morning. We were spending something like fourteen hours a day together.
We were IN IT.
And it happened incredibly fast. Maybe a month. Maybe five or six weeks.
But in that tiny window of time, this person became one of my closest friends. We called each other twin flames. He understood me in a way that made me feel incredibly seen.
He loved Goodwill.
That alone should tell you how serious I thought this friendship was.
He loved weird little adventures. He loved positivity. He loved talking about the universe. He would listen to all my talk about crystals, moon water, rituals, energy, angels, synchronicities, and general Brooks-being-Brooks stuff without looking at me like I needed to be escorted from the premises.
I felt completely free around him.
And he fit into my life. He met my friends. People liked him. We celebrated my birthday together. There weren’t giant flashing red lights screaming:
BROOKS, THIS MAN IS NOT WHO HE SAYS HE IS.
Meanwhile, Jordan had an elaborate story about his life.
Money. Family wealth. A trust. Properties. A privileged childhood. Homes in beautiful places. A life that sounded completely foreign to mine but also detailed enough that I never really stopped to question it.
And this is where one of my mother’s oldest sayings comes back to haunt me:
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Mom, you remain undefeated.
Eventually, Jordan started looking for a house. The person helping him originally didn’t work out, and I said, “My brother is a realtor.”
So my brother got involved. He found Jordan a house. Paperwork started moving. Everything appeared normal.
Until one day I got a text from my brother. He needed to talk to me.
Alone.
Jordan knew my brother wanted to speak with me, and suddenly everything changed.
There were tears. There was a story about something going wrong with the trust. Someone had messed with the money. Everything was gone. He had to go deal with it.
And then he left.
I called my brother. Essentially, he told me:
This guy isn’t who you think he is.
Information had surfaced during the process that raised very serious questions about Jordan’s identity, finances, and history.
And suddenly this entire beautiful little world I had been living in cracked straight down the middle.
My brother told him to stay away from me and our family. And that was basically it.
My best friend disappeared from my life almost overnight.
But the story wasn’t quite finished.
Jordan had also become involved with another friend of mine—we’ll call him Brandon. Brandon didn’t know what I knew.
And I made a decision that some people may disagree with: I didn’t immediately tell him everything.
I didn’t believe Brandon was in physical danger, and I believed he had the right to experience his own relationship and come to his own conclusions rather than have me dictate them for him.
So I stayed out of it.
Recently, Brandon and Jordan finally ended things. Then I got the text I had been waiting for without even realizing I was waiting for it.
Basically:
I just found out Jordan is a fraud. LMAO.
THANK GOD BRANDON CAN LAUGH.
Because suddenly I had someone who understood. Someone else had known our Jordan.
Not the story on paper. Not the background-check version.
The person we laughed with. The person we trusted. The person we connected with. The person who seemed so incredibly real.
And that has been strangely healing. Because both of us were sitting there going:
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?
We still don’t completely understand the endgame. Brandon didn’t have some giant pile of money waiting to be stolen. And I certainly wasn’t handing Jordan my life savings.
Honey, I shop at Goodwill. You have selected the wrong heiress.
But that almost makes the whole thing stranger. What was the point?
Maybe we’ll never know. And I’m realizing I don’t actually need to know.
Because the bigger story isn’t about figuring Jordan out.
It’s about figuring me out.
Jordan taught me something enormously important about myself: my greatest qualities can become blind spots when I don’t pair them with awareness.
I am loving. I am accepting. I am compassionate. I am curious about people.
When I meet somebody I like, I want to know them. I want to love them. I want to understand them. I want to cheer them on.
Those are beautiful qualities.
But love without discernment can leave the door wide open.
I don’t need to become suspicious. I don’t need to become cynical. I don’t need to walk into every new relationship thinking, Okay, psychopath, reveal yourself.
That isn’t me.
But I can walk into a relationship awake. I can love somebody and observe them. I can believe somebody and still notice whether their story makes sense. I can trust while allowing trust to be earned.
I can keep my heart open without leaving the entire damn house unlocked.
I don’t need heavier armor. I need greater awareness.
That may be the greatest gift Jordan gave me. But—and here’s where this story gets complicated—he gave me other gifts too.
For years I had wanted to podcast. I was scared to start. Part of me was scared of failing, sure. But I think another part of me was scared of succeeding.
Jordan pushed me. He encouraged me. He sat beside me while I figured it out.
He basically said, over and over:
You be you. You have something worth saying. People will listen. Your voice matters.
And somewhere during that bizarre five-week friendship, something clicked inside me. I started believing it.
He gave me this ridiculous “YOU ARE THAT BITCH” energy.
And you know what? Apparently I needed it.
Because eventually it became:
Wait. I AM that girl.
I can walk proudly. I can speak. I can create. I can put my thoughts into the world. I don’t have to apologize for taking up space.
Was Jordan responsible for that transformation?
No. That was already inside me.
But sometimes somebody walks into your life carrying the match that lights something you already had waiting to burn.
And that is why, despite everything, I don’t regret meeting him.
Brandon feels similarly. He learned things too.
Which brings me to my strangest theory:
Jordan may have been some kind of twisted angel.
Not an angel in the sense that what happened was okay. It wasn’t.
But sometimes the universe delivers lessons in packaging we would NEVER voluntarily order.
Jordan felt like a soft launch. A cosmic warning shot. Like the universe saying:
Baby girl, we love the open heart. Keep the open heart. But we’re adding discernment to the package.
Because maybe next time the lesson wouldn’t be so gentle. Maybe next time money would disappear. Maybe next time the consequences would be bigger.
This time? I lost a friendship.
And THAT was the painful part.
I didn’t lose my dignity. I didn’t lose my money. I didn’t lose myself.
I lost someone I thought was my best friend.
That hurt.
I had to grieve someone who, in a strange way, both existed and didn’t exist.
The person I loved was real to me. The laughs were real. The conversations were real. The feeling of connection was real.
My experience was real even if parts of the person presenting himself to me weren’t. And I think that distinction matters.
I don’t have to call myself stupid for believing somebody. I don’t have to be embarrassed because somebody was convincing.
I can simply become wiser.
That is the difference between letting something make you bitter and letting something make you better.
So Jordan has officially completed his cycle.
He went through the wash. There was a little slow-burn tumble dry situation at the end.
But eventually:
DING.
Cycle complete. Jordan has left the laundromat.
And I wish him well. Truly.
I hope he gets whatever help he needs. I hope whatever makes a person feel like they need to manufacture versions of themselves gets healed somewhere along the way.
But that part isn’t mine anymore.
Brandon made it through. I made it through. We can laugh now. We can compare notes. We can recognize what we learned.
And most importantly, I can move forward with the same gigantic heart I had before—just with better security at the door.
So God bless Jordan. God bless Brandon. God bless my brother for doing his damn homework.
God bless my mother and her undefeated “too good to be true” wisdom.
God bless the universe. God bless the lessons.
God bless the weird-ass people who come into our lives, flip the furniture around, teach us something enormous, and disappear before we fully understand what just happened.
I’m here for all of it.
It’s just another ride at the Earth party, baby.
